At the other place: I consider the difference in student attire between Duke and Millsaps, and the nature of the causal mechanism involved.

Nope, it’s not another weekly blog roundup… instead, it’s Matthew Stinson’s moniker for this weekend’s anti-war festivities, organized by the neo-Stalinists at International ANSWER and the anti-Jewish bigots at the Nation of Islam, and headlined by Mama Sheehan; the local branch office here at Duke decided to join in the festivities by making a 15-foot “missile” and sticking it in the middle of the West Quad on the pedastal where James Duke’s statue normally stands.

Matt proposes a drinking game for the C-SPAN coverage… which would be a nice idea, but I can’t afford that much liquor. Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds thinks the press ought to stop whitewashing the anti-war movement; while I do actually believe there is a “authentic antiwar movement” in America (unlike, apparently, Glenn), and there are serious people I respect who disagree with me about the merits of the war in Iraq (Hi Scott! Hi Dad!), I’m not at all convinced that the “authentic” elements of the antiwar movement are doing themselves any favors by associating themselves with left-wing hate groups like the NoI and ANSWER.

More to the point, if (say) anti-immigration or anti-busing protests were being organized by the Klan or its front organizations, and “mainstream” folks were at risk of lending their support to those protests, I strongly suspect the media coverage would be deafening compared to the distinct lack of outrage that genuine public concern about Iraq has become a free recruiting tool for bigots and radical anti-capitalists. The sad thing is that a lot of Americans probably will join these protests because they don’t really know who’s behind them—and the press is doing these people a disservice.

My first real publication (broadly defined) in political science is now officially “forthcoming”; while it’s only a short piece in The Political Methodologist, the biannual newsletter of the Society for Political Methodology, I figure you have to start somewhere. It’s a brief overview of Quantian, a “Live Linux” DVD that’s geared toward use by social, behavioral, and natural scientists.

My co-author and Quantian’s developer, Dirk Eddelbuettel, has the current version of the piece up at his website, for the morbidly curious. The article probably will appear in the Fall 2005 issue, whenever that emerges.